Ebay (EBAY) announced yesterday that they would begin rolling out a contextual advertising system of their own called eBay AdContext, but would differ from Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) in that ads would link directly to auction goods rather than serving a generic advertising network.  Still, it’s just one more competitor that may take away publisher ad space and ultimately clicks from the big gorilla Google.  With both Yahoo and Microsoft set to roll out their own competing platform for publishers, Google should be concerned.  The competition can only be good for publishers.  While eBay has said that the service will rather compliment Google Adsense and could be run side by side, it will be interesting to see if Google will allow eBay ads to run on the same page.  Currently Google does not allow contextual advertising (ads displayed based on keywords of the page) from other companies to run on the same page.  This rigidity along with notoriously poor customer support may have publishers increasingly turning to alternatives over the next year.

 

Here’s the Reuters news story

Upon additional research, some additional info to consider:

1. There is already a system in place for publishers to display eBay auction items through contextual advertising that is independent of eBay.  One such program, fyiAds launched just a couple of weeks ago (see an example of an ad at the top of the page.

2. Like fyiAds, eBay’s system is CPA, where publisher’s only receive payment through commission on a sale of an item, rather than a cost per click basis (40 – 70% commissions).  Could be lucrative for publishers writing about high ticket items.

3. Amazon is rumored to be working on their own contextual advertising system – everyone wants a piece of Google’s pie!  In the meantime, it looks like an independent program for displaying Amazoon products is available too.